AnandTech takes a look at AMD's new Phenom. "If you were looking for a changing of the guard today it's just not going to happen. Phenom is, clock for clock, slower than Core 2 and the chips aren't yet yielding well enough to boost clock speeds above what Intel is capable of. While AMD just introduced its first 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz quad-core CPUs today, Intel previewed its first 3.2GHz quad-core chips. We were expecting Intel to retain the high end performance crown, but also expected AMD to chip away at the lower end of the quad-core market - today's launch confirms that Intel is still the king of the quad-core market."

There is a reason why Intel went the way they did with fusing two dual cores instead of trying to get a true quad core to market. AMD should stop worrying about marketing buzzwords and get something out that actually competes.

Their 'true quad core' competes alright but what I would question is whether the 5% competive advantage is worth the amount of money spent, market share lost and lag between the Intel release and AMD's.

Unfortunately AMD is a company run by engineers who are unwilling to acknowledge when a cool idea is not worth persuing because the benefits promised cannot offset the risks it entails taking a more complex path.

That is why Sun is offering Intel workstations and servers; they've slowly started to realise that when push comes to shove, in terms of reliability of product delivery, its better to place your bets on Intel. Its the same reason why Apple went with Intel as well.